I had her hair half ripped out of her scalp. Her face twisted, her hands clawing at the air.

"Help! Murder! The Ferrante woman's gone crazy! Outsiders are coming after Porto Scuro folk, somebody help!"

I slapped her, hard. Her teeth rattled. Blood ran down from the corner of her mouth, and one side of her face puffed up red and shiny in seconds.

"Shut up. One more squawk and I cut your tongue out and feed it to the gulls."

I laid the cold flat of the stiletto against her cheek. She went silent. She started shaking. She didn't dare breathe.

Bruno had clawed his way back to his feet. His face was a mask of blood, his eyes full of hate.

"Sofia Ferrante. So you'll really pull a knife in Porto Scuro. Fine. None of you walks out tonight. What are you all standing around for? Beat her to death. Anything goes wrong, it's on me."

A dozen of Bruno's hangers-on grabbed up sticks and chains and closed around me, tightening the circle.

Giulia, just dragged out of the fish barrel, was clinging to her mother and shaking so hard she could barely speak.

"Sister, please, run. They'll really kill you. Don't worry about us."

I ran my tongue over my back teeth. Whatever I'd buried in Naples for three years was rising back up, all of it.

When I was ten years old I was running smuggled crates with my father in the Naples docks. I'd seen worse before breakfast. A handful of village punks were going to scare me?

I shoved Esposito's wife away, flipped the stiletto in my hand, reverse grip, and stepped forward instead of back.

The first one swung a stick at my shoulder.

I dropped under it, drove my heel into his kneecap — felt it give — and opened up his arm with the blade on the way past.

Less than a minute and there were three men on the ground rolling and screaming.

The rest looked at each other. Sticks shaking in their hands. Nobody wanted to be next.

That's when the whistles started outside the yard, sharp and shrill.

Mayor Don Salvo barreled in with a dozen town cops in tow, batons out, sweat running down his face.

"Stop. Everyone, stop. Sofia Ferrante, you've lost your mind. Pulling a knife on people in my town. Have you no respect for the law?"

Don Salvo had a belly on him. He jabbed a fat finger at me, spit flying with every word.

The mayor of Porto Scuro — Bruno Sacco's own uncle — was the man behind every dock buyout in town. In a town of two thousand people, "Don Salvo" really did call the shots: every fishing boat coming in had to grease his palm, every shipment going out paid him a cut, even the parish priest had to think twice before crossing him. Everyone in town knew the uncle and nephew were two snakes in one hole; they treated this little stretch of coast like their own private kingdom. Trouble was, his world had never extended past the Bay of Naples. He'd never had the imagination to picture the kind of people he absolutely should not touch.

I laughed, short and cold. A drop of blood rolled off the stiletto and landed on the stones, dark red.

"Salvo, if your eyes don't work, dig 'em out and use 'em as paperweights. Where were you when my husband took a boot to the ribs? Where were you when my mother-in-law was face-down in a fish barrel? Now you want to play the impartial mayor? You'd do well in Roman politics — that two-faced act is wasted out here."

His face went purple. He cleared his throat and tried for righteous indignation.

"Enough. Bruno and Luca are injured. There are witnesses, there's evidence. Officers, cuff her and take her to the city station. We don't keep dangerous types like this loose."

A couple of the cops moved toward me with handcuffs.

"Touch her and you're dead."

Weak voice. Iron behind it.

Marco had dragged himself up the wall, one hand braced against the brick, white-faced and shaking but on his feet.

He pulled a rusted fishing knife off the wall and stepped between me and them, unsteady, but planted.

"Sofia is my wife. Anyone touches a hair on her head, I'm Marco Conti, and I'll take you with me on the way out. Anybody not afraid to die, come ahead."

Every word brought up more bloody foam at his lips. But his eyes — his eyes were wolfish. He meant it.

The cops shrank back, glancing at each other, no one moving.

I locked my arms around his waist from behind. The tears finally came.

"Marco, are you stupid? Look at you. Sit down. Sit down."

Marco took my hand. His palm was ice cold, but the grip was steady. Absolute.

"Don't be afraid. As long as I'm breathing, no one touches you."

Don Salvo's face went a darker shade. Something mean flickered behind his eyes.

"Sweet little lovebirds. You won't take the easy road, fine. Bruno — go ring the bell at the church. I'm calling in every dock boss and every family elder in this town. Tonight we deal with these troublemakers by Porto Scuro rules. Let's see who tries to stop me."

Bruno gave a twisted grin and limped out.

A heavy bell started ringing across the rooftops, slow and deep, and you could feel it in your stomach.

This was the worst sentence Porto Scuro had. What Don Salvo called "the rules" was a mob court — not law, just the unwritten code the dock racket and the local strongmen had cooked up between them over the decades. Once they ruled on you, you didn't walk out the same.

Giulia slid down to the stones, the color gone from her face.

"It's over. Sister. Marco. We're dead. Nobody walks out of Porto Scuro after they ring that bell. Nobody."

I held Marco up. I looked at Don Salvo. There was nothing warm left in my face.

"Salvo. You'd better pray we die here tonight. Because if we don't, tomorrow your whole family is on their knees in front of me, and you're spending the rest of your life in a cell."

Don Salvo spat on the floor. The fat under his chin shook.

"Big words. Surround them. Move them down to the dock yards. Not one of them gets away."

The sun was sliding down. The clouds along the horizon had gone deep red.

But the dockyard at Porto Scuro was lit up like noon. Dozens of torches turned the stretch of pavement bright as day.

A few hundred people, torches and crowbars and chains and fishing gaffs, packed in around the four of us.

The air had a weight to it that made it hard to breathe.

Rosa was clutching Giulia, both of them shivering, neither daring to make a sound. Marco was propped against a rusted iron anchor, gray-faced, his chest spasming with every breath.

Don Salvo had climbed up onto the warehouse steps, holding a fat book he called the "Town Code" — really just a private compendium of the punishments the local underworld families had decided on, year by year. He looked down at us from up there.

"Marco Conti broke town rules. He let his wife pull a knife on locals. Disrespect to his elders. Sentence — both legs broken, expelled from Porto Scuro, forbidden to return. As for that shrew Sofia — three days on display in the dock square. Conti family warehouse and dock share, confiscated. Property of the Dockworkers' Association."

The crowd cheered. The greed in their eyes wasn't even hidden anymore.

Esposito's wife jumped highest of all, jabbing a finger at me.

"Yes. Do it. See if she's still got that mouth on her after that. Sell her off to a farm in Sicily. Let her sweat for a change."

I looked around at all those greedy, ugly faces, and started to laugh. The sound carried in the night.

So this was the place I'd hidden my whole self in for three years, for love. The old saying held — backwater breeds bastards. They wore the face of decent folk and underneath there was nothing but calculation and grasping.

I gripped the stiletto. My nails were cutting into my palm. Threads of blood worked out between my fingers.

"Salvo. What are you, exactly, that you think you can hold a kangaroo court? You think Porto Scuro is some independent kingdom? There are still laws in this country. This is murder."

Don Salvo found this funny. He threw his head back and laughed.

"Laws. In Porto Scuro, I am the law. The capital is far away and the king doesn't care. We kill you tonight, push you into the sea, who's going to find anything? Get on with it. Get the woman."

A dozen heavy-set men closed in, rubbing their hands, looking me up and down without bothering to hide it.

Marco let out a despairing sound and tried to lift the fishing knife — choked on his own blood and started coughing it up.

"Don't move." I forced him back, planted myself between him and them.

I licked my dry lips. Something old and dark was rising behind my eyes.

"Whoever steps forward, I put ten holes in him. Anybody not afraid to die, you're welcome to try."

I dragged the blade across my own forearm. My blood ran down the steel and dripped on the stones.

That stopped them. The crazy kind of move stops people every time.

Nobody wanted to be the first man through the door. They were here to watch a show and pick at the carcass after — none of them was looking to die for it.

Bruno panicked. He hopped out of the line, snarling.

"Useless cowards. She's one woman. All of you, together. Two thousand euros to the first man who lays a hand on her."

Two thousand euros, in this town, was more than a season's catch.

The men looked at each other. The greed lit up. They lifted their sticks and chains together and brought them down.

Nowhere to go. I took it.

Two heavy thuds.

A chain caught me across the back. The pain went through me like a hot wire — I felt it in my organs.

Something coppery came up my throat. I swallowed it down, used the momentum to drive the stiletto into the next man's thigh.

Another scream went up.

But two fists can't fight four. The sticks kept coming.

Marco shoved me hard and put his back between me and them.

"Sofia, run. Don't worry about me. Go. Just go."

His voice was thinning out. His back was already a mess of broken skin and blood, soaking the stones.

"Marco—" I screamed it. Tears blurring everything. My chest splitting.

Bruno had gotten close in the chaos. He was holding an old revolver — the kind that gets passed around the Porto Scuro black market, no serial number, no paper trail.

The black hole of the muzzle was an inch from Marco's head.

"Die, dog. Be smarter next time around."

His finger was tightening on the trigger.

My head went white. Whatever was left of reason was gone.

My father had taught me, when I was small: if a man's coming for your life, you go for his whole family first. With evil men you have to be worse than they are.

I lunged at Bruno.

I kicked the torch stand on the way. A burning piece of pinewood came down across his shoulders.

The revolver fired.

The crack was deafening, and my ears rang.

The bullet skimmed past Marco's scalp and smashed into an old wooden plaque on the warehouse wall. Splinters everywhere.

The burning wood seared Bruno's bare arm — blisters rose in seconds. He was screaming. The revolver clattered onto the stones.

I rode him down. Drove my knee into his chest. Put the stiletto right under his eye, close enough that the tip felt his lashes flicker.

"Tell every one of them to back up. Or I take the eye. Then I cut your tendons."

The blade was less than a millimeter from his pupil. Bruno wet himself. The smell of it rose up between us.

"Back up. BACK THE FUCK UP. Uncle, help me, this woman's really gonna do it."

Don Salvo had gone gray. He hadn't read me right. He hadn't realized how far I'd take it.

"Sofia. Calm down. You kill him, that's a life sentence. Put the knife down. We can talk this through."

"A life sentence. I'll die here tonight if it means I take all of Porto Scuro down with me. You think I won't?"

My eyes were red. The blade pressed in a fraction. It nicked his eyelid. Hot blood ran into his eye and clouded his vision.

The crowd backed up — fast, opening a clear circle around us. No one was moving anymore.

But it wasn't over.

There were still hundreds of them around us. In the dark, rings of greedy, ugly eyes.

Marco was on the ground, breath barely there, blood pooling under him. Rosa and Giulia were crying so hard they could hardly stand. The whole place felt like a grave.

Something heavy settled in my chest.

So was this it? Was I really going to die here, in this nothing fishing town? Sofia Ferrante walks Naples for twenty years and ends up done in by a handful of village punks?

Don Salvo, watching me hesitate, found his nerve again. Something cold and ugly came back into his face.

"Don't be afraid of her, all of you. She won't really do it. Wear her down. She's one woman, she'll run out of fight. When she does, we move."

The circle started to tighten again.

I clenched my teeth. Last stand. If I was going down, I was taking some of them with me.

That's when it started.

A wind came in off the harbor, hard and wrong, the kind that doesn't belong to any normal weather.

Strong enough you couldn't keep your eyes open. The masts down at the dock began to whip back and forth. Sand and bits of grit came off the ground and stung anything they hit.

Then came the noise.

Far off, then closer, low and growing. The stones under our feet started vibrating.

"What is that? Earthquake?" Don Salvo was looking around, scared.

The sound built until your eardrums hurt.

Then headlights. Hard white beams cutting through the dark.

Dozens of black Mercedes SUVs and heavy trucks came roaring up the narrow main road of Porto Scuro, lights blazing.

The wooden barricades and fishmongers' stalls in their way crumpled like paper.

Don Salvo was staring at the plates. Naples plates. No, more than Naples — Milan, Rome. A few he didn't even recognize. Sweat broke out across his forehead. For the first time he understood: whatever was coming for him tonight, he had never met its kind.

And above —

Three black helicopters were coming down. The rotors threw a hurricane through the square. Searchlight beams pinned the warehouse yard.

The light was blinding. The crowd dropped what they were holding and tried to scatter. Screaming, falling over each other.

"Oh God, what is this? Helicopters? In Porto Scuro?"

"It's the mob. They're here. Run!"

The choppers held position. Heavy ropes uncoiled and dropped.

Dozens of men in black tailored suits and silver-rimmed shades came down the lines, fast and clean, identical movement. They had every high point in the square locked down inside ten seconds.

The trucks settled. The cargo doors went up.

A few hundred more men poured out, kitted out, and folded the townspeople into a circle of their own. Tighter than the one we'd been in.

The whole picture flipped. The Porto Scuro thugs who'd been swaggering minutes ago were huddled together now, trembling.

A long black Mercedes S-class with Naples plates rolled slowly up through the parted crowd.

The door opened.

A pair of polished black handmade shoes touched down on the stones.